Spring Sunflowers

Credit: Barbra Fairclough

You can also see this prolific native on the subalpine plateaus of the Chilcotin. It is sheer delight to experience its happy scattering of colour presiding over a dormant grassland or scree slope that looks as if it would otherwise not host another living organism. This perennial will grow up to 80 centimetres in a clump with several composite flowers, each on a single stem. Its arrow-shaped leaves are a perfect foil for the bright-yellow flowers that arise from May into June, depending on where in the province you are.